Any business that’s had a successful run always wants to consider market expansion. After all, any growth is better than no growth at all. When it comes to market expansion, you always want to have a strategy before you start out. Market expansion can make or break a company and understanding the risks as well as the work that goes into it is only part of making it work. Here are some tips to help you create an effective market expansion strategy:
Understand your new market
You might be used to catering towards a certain audience, but with market expansion, they won’t be the only audience you need to focus on. Market expansion is, after all, all about expanding to an entirely new market which means an entirely new audience and an entirely new opportunity to grow. Before you can begin creating a strategy, you need to decide which market you’ll be expanding to. Are you working within the same market but expanding to a different niche or sector? Or are you planning to bring your product to an international audience?
The first step to building a market strategy for a certain audience is knowing that audience. Do your research about it and work with what you have from there. For example, if you want to advertise to millennials or Gen Zers, learn all about their likes, needs, and what kind of marketing strategy works best for their general audience. Every consumer is different and will not always react the same way to certain advertisements or products. Personalize your marketing strategy for the specific consumer you want.
For new markets, especially, doing your research is essential. For example, if you’re expanding to an international reach, you want to know what consumers from a particular country are like. There are vast cultural differences between countries and what might be received well in the States might not be as favorable in other places like, say, the UK or China. Do your due diligence and research, research, research.
Understand why you’re expanding
Are you expanding because you want your company to grow? Has your main audience changed? Have you met all the needs and expectations of your target audience with your original product and now want to test the limits of how far you can go? It might seem strange to ask you to re-evaluate your reasons for doing this now but it is important to fully understand your purposes for expanding before you do anything else.
Think about why you’re doing it. Do you see it as a beneficial move for your company? Are you trying to make up for the sunk cost by appealing to a wider audience? Has your company had a good run so far and you see this as the logical ‘next step’ for your continued growth? Understanding the reason why you think market expansion is a viable option for your company matters a lot more than you think.
For one thing, you get to assess just how ready your company is for market expansion and another, you’re making sure that you’re not doing this for the wrong reasons. Market expansion comes with a lot of risks and though you might think it is the next best step, your company might not be ready for it. So really think about it before you proceed.
Tailor your content for the right audience
Knowing your audience is all well and good, but you need to know what kind of marketing strategy works best for each audience as well. For example, millennials and Gen Zers, being part of the digital age, might respond better to content marketing made online such as social media and influencer marketing. Tailor your product and your advertising for the audience you want instead of casting a wide net. That’s the entire point of market expansion — working with a new audience. So expanding your marketing strategies should be one of your priorities as well.
Have a good marketing team
So you have a target audience, found a viable market strategy. But are you sure it’s the right one? And how do you put it into effect anyway? If you’ve ever been in doubt, having a reliable marketing team to back you up can make all the difference. A good marketing team can not only help you tailor your content for a certain audience but can also help you come up with enterprise growth strategies while they’re doing that.
Whether they’re full-time or outsourced, you have the assurance that they’re professionals in the field with years of experience under their belt and the expertise to ease your company through this transition to a bigger or better market. Even if you’ve never had one before, now’s a good time as any to form your own marketing team and get working.
In the end, a market expansion strategy is only as good as your team and your ideas. It can be a risky endeavor with more than a few difficulties, but if your company can come up with an effective strategy, then you shouldn’t be afraid to take the leap of faith.
